Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is a particular kind of American administrative object that works by accident, and this is the purest example of it.
The Social Security number was created in…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Walk into any shop in the world and a startling proportion of the prices end in a nine. Nine ninety-nine, four ninety-five, nineteen ninety-nine, ninety-nine pence, and so…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Organised youth baseball was at its absolute peak in the late nineteen-sixties. Nearly every American town had a programme, the fields were busy every evening from spring to…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Long-haul trucking in 1975 was at a peculiar high point. The interstate system was essentially complete, freight was moving by road in volumes it never had before, and…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
There is a specific moment, four years after this one, when American wine stopped being a joke - a blind tasting in Paris in 1976 in which French…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Drag racing was the most accessible motorsport ever invented. The format required a straight piece of tarmac, two cars and somebody to say go, and in the nineteen-sixties…